


When violet eyes get brighter, and heavy wings grow lighter

by orphan_account



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Backstory, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Identity Reveal, former generation of wielders, hawkmoth's backstory, includes the story of how gabriel met adrien's mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 01:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6932476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel Agreste was ready for the world, but he wasn't ready for her.</p><p>He wasn't ready for her death, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When violet eyes get brighter, and heavy wings grow lighter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M.](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=M.).



He sees her for the first time on the summer of '89 on a fashion show in London. He's sitting in the back row, all thick glasses and sweaty palms because one of his designs is going to be presented in the end of the show. She's sitting in the front row, where all the rich and popular people sit, slouched back in her chair like she doesn't give a damn about the world. 

His thoughts venture from the infamous aristocracy of haute couture for a moment - she's wearing a sky blue dress and her hair is golden like wheat, and her eyes - her eyes are so strange. They aren't blue, and they aren't brown either. Maybe it's the lights, but Gabriel swears that her eyes are purple, and she's got a wierd sort of shadow in them. Her gaze is gloomy and unfocused, but she's incredibly lovely. Gabriel feels something strange - he's not usually influenced by female beauty. He sees a lot of beautiful women every day, but she's different. 

He overhears a word - Félicité - and he knows right away that it's her name.

Gabriel Agreste is a rising star and he's infatuated. In love, maybe. He blinks the feeling away - it's not like they'll cross paths again, soon. She must be awfully rich and out of his league anyway.

o'o'o

They meet again in New York City, almost a year later. This time he catches her alone, or rather, she catches him alone. She asks him where the lobby is and remembers his design from London last year - he smiles, he's hosting his own fashion shows now - and they realize they're both from Paris. They end up talking and laughing and drinking, and she gets lost in the hallway and strays into his bedroom, that night.

'Your eyes are so strange.' he tells to her. 'Hypnotizing.' 

'Oh, these!' she laughs. 'These are contact lenses. My eyes are actually green.'

'Brighter, or darker?' he demands to know.

'What?' she raises a brow.

'Are your green eyes brighter or darker than your purple eyes?'

'Brighter.' Félicité decides.

o'o'o

He's even more mesmerized by her green eyes, than he was with the 'purple ones', as he dubbed them. He doesn't let her wear them anymore. Her gaze is much clearer without them, and he likes her staring directly into his dark pupils.

o'o'o

They fall apart after he nearly ruins his career, and then they fall back together in the fall of '98. She's nothing like she was before, her tongue is sharper and so are her green eyes - they stare into his soul as she tells him that he's not flawless, that he's too much obsessed with power and control, and that she can't take it anymore.

Then she realizes that she's pregnant, so they get married anyway.

o'o'o

One day, six months before Adrien was born (or Theodora, if it's a girl), he stumbles upon something strange as he's searching trough her desk drawer in search for a pair of golden earrings he needs her to wear to his fashion show tonight. It's a small wooden box, ebony, to be precise. He glances around and opens it.

Inside, there's a single silver ring, thick and too robust for her delicate finger. In the middle there's a carving that looks a little like a cat's paw. When he thinks about it, the carvings on the box look a little like a cat too.

o'o'o

'What the fuck, Gabriel?' she's almost shouting, and he presses his lips. He doesn't like it when she's swearing. 

'Am I not allowed to own a single thing you didn't choose for me?' she continues. 'It's just a ring, I got it from my father when I was seventeen!'

'Don't pretend to be stupid.' he says. 'I've seen a thing like this before. Actually, I've seen a box like this before.'

'It's just a box! It's a damn gift box from the jewelry store.' she insists.

'Put it on, Félicité.' he says quietly.

'What?'

'Put it on, Félicité!' he repeats, more loudly.

She sees that there's no way around it, so she grabs the ring and slips it on her thin ring finger. It's a bit too big, but it looks like it fits her perfectly, and there's a quiet zap and a flash of black as she puts it on.

'Now, what are you waiting for? Do it.' he growls.

'Do what, darling?' she looks at him innocently. Gabriel blinks it away.

'Do. It. Félicité.'

o'o'o

She knows that he's won. So she swallows a sob, balls her fists and mutters a word too quietly for him to hear.

'Claws out.'

o'o'o

How? How has she been able to keep it secret from him? Her green eyes grow large and her irises shrink, and her facial features morph into those of a cat. She's wrapped in black, a color that she never usually wears and there's a barely visible baby bump on her stomach.

She looks like a beautiful liar. 

o'o'o

Gabriel loves her. Gabriel loves his son. But Félicité's lost his trust. 

Adrien looks just like her, with large green eyes and innocent smile, except that she's not innocent. No, Adrien is more perfect than her. He doesn't have thin lips nor scars on his lower back. Adrien is more beautiful than her, and he will make sure that he's the star he deserves to be.

'No.' she opposes. 'You will not make him one of them.' 

'It's just a photoshoot, Félicité.' he says. 'Just one time, and than he's all yours.' he lies.

'That's your problem, Gabriel! He's not all mine nor all yours! We are a family.'

'Chat Noir.' he muses. 'Did you get that nickname before or after you killed a man?' 

For once, she's silent.

o'o'o

There are only two shots, and she's lying on the street, life leaving her eyes.

The man with a shotgun is running away, screaming the words of revenge. Félicité is dying. Her hair looks like a pool of gold spilled around her head and her eyes are dark and shady.

He falls to his knees and grabs her hand, because there's nothing else to do, he can only hold her hand. He breathes in the scent, her flowery smell still in the air around her and reads from her eyes

You broke me, Gabriel, they say. 

He remembers how her 'purple eyes' looked, how they were clouded and gloomy and dark. He remembers how he forbid her to wear them, and his own words hurt him. He realizes that, only maybe, she wanted to wear them. He can't look at her, even though she's trying to say something in ragged whispers.

'Gabriel.' she mutters. He cries into her hair because the last word she fought for was his name, and that breaks him the way he broke her.

o'o'o

Chat Noir is pinned to the wall of Hawk Moth's lair by the overlord himself, and when the man raises his hand to tear the mask off Adrien's face, he reflexively flinches back and shields his face with his one free hand, and they both realize something.

o'o'o

He was thirteen, and his father was sitting opposite of him on the kitchen table. At least ten people could sit confortably around it, but his mother's place was painfully empty.

'Where is she?' he sounds like he's on the edge of tears.

'She's gone missing.' his father says. His voice is cold and flat, and what plagues Adrien the most is that he doesn't even cares that she's not here.đ

'Has she died?' he tries again.

'Shut up, Adrien.' his father says, and gives him a threatening look. He knows that he mustn't push his father's limits when he's in a bad mood like this, but she's way too important.

'Is she dead, father?'

'SHUT UP, ADRIEN!' his father's stood up and the slap landed on his cheek before he could even process it, and the first thought in his mind is that it's the first time his father has ever yelled at him. As the bruise appears on his painful jaw, he marches to his room with a toast crumbled hopelessly in his hand.

It was the last time his father has ever yelled at him. Every other time he hit him, he didn't make a sound and neither did Adrien.

o'o'o

Something visually snaps in Hawk Moth's eyes as he stands there above Chat Noir, studying those eyes that were so similar to hers when she was transformed. 

Nobody else flinches like that when he raises his hand like his son. 

It hits him so hard, again, like when he watched her die. Another person he had broken. It seems like it's all he ever does. 

The next moment he's holding his son in his arms like he hadn't since he was little, and he's crying like he hadn't since she died, and Adrien slowly but firmly wraps an arm around him.

And than he hits him in the temple so hard that he falls to his knees. Hawk Moth doesn't get up, but thinks of how beautiful she looks on a painting he had done after their wedding. 

o'o'o

Adrien stands above him, for the first time he is the stronger one, and tears drop down his nose to his cheeks.


End file.
